


Haunted City Sketch Dump

by Davis (Ihasa)



Series: The Haunted City [4]
Category: Original Work, The Haunted City
Genre: Horror, Shorts, comedy and character stuff, these are mostly comedy to be honest, trans protagonist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:21:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 14,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihasa/pseuds/Davis
Summary: Doodles, sketches, drabbles, whatever you want to call them, this is a collection of shorts set in and around The Haunted City, in no particular order. Some are a little longer, but nothing I'd consider a full short story. Enjoy!
Series: The Haunted City [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984283





	1. Maxim and Law

“Maxim and Law, dear, Maxim and Law,” sighed Photon, reaching on tiptoe past Ariel’s shoulder into the cabinet and drawing a tiny, dark blue glass bottle from the top shelf. It was unlabeled, and she compared it to several nearly identical bottles before deciding on the right one. Ariel watched her do this expectantly for a moment, glanced at Spencer, and sighed somewhat theatrically.

“Come on, Photon. She doesn’t know what that means.”

Photon settled back down on her heels, blinking owlishly at the bottle, then at Spencer, then at Ariel.

“Goodness, Ariel,  _ everyone  _ knows Maxim and Law-“

Ariel snorted, eyes rolling. “You can’t just  _ assume _ that, Photon,  _ she  _ doesn’t know, she’s an  _ amateur _ ,” but as the word left his mouth his scowl dropped, mounting alarm coloring his face like a splash of paint. “Er, ah, she’s an  _ experienced _ amateur- I mean, well, no offence, Spencer.”

“Whatever,” said Spencer, her smile like a knife.

“Oh, you’re absolutely right, puppy,” said Photon, patting Ariel affectionately on the stomach before twirling back to her station. Ariel made a soft, flustered sound, something like a disturbed hen, and buttoned his jacket in a nervous sort of way. Photon went on with a wave of her hand: “I’m sorry, Spencer, let me explain.”

She raised the silver bowl towards one corner of the room, passing her hand over the surface with practiced quickness. “Magic, majik, magick, or however you want to spell it, is a law of nature. A set of rules that the world must obey. Like gravity, or physics.”

Photon set the bowl down, spun it once, realigned it to the corner and poured a precise amount of the sparkling oil into it. Spencer could see the grooves stamped into the silver, measurements in ounces and liters. Glitter, and in the bowl she could see it was definitely glitter floating in the oil,  _ orange  _ glitter, and something else that smelled like paint – nail polish? – spun in the liquid. Photon continued:

“This, of course, means magic is something that can be effected and observed. A science, though one we don’t understand entirely. But did you know that intelligent, learned people once believed that bees were created out of rotting meat? And in a way, that’s true, for certain values of truth. Kill a bull, leave it in a shed, and if you return in a few months, voila – bees  _ will  _ be swarming the carcass. You missed a few steps by not observing the bees arriving, and not following the bees to their hive, but that’s what one does, as a practitioner – generate bees from beef. Not literally.” Photon’s one bright eye glanced over her glasses at Spencer.

“Well. Not  _ usually _ . Though I must say, the api-bovine scenario is one of my old favorites, I’ve always wanted to  _ really _ dive into it, and oh, did you know I once-”

“Photon,” Ariel chuckled.

“Ah, right.” Photon sighed, smiled, winked at Spencer. “Another time.” She took a needle from a leather sheath, a bent old thing made of brass or bronze, and uncorked the little blue bottle, sniffed the contents, thrust it away with a bright ‘whew!’. She dipped the needle in once. Twice. A third time, with a slow, deliberate rhythm. She dropped it into the oil. The glitter floated to the top, forming wavering islands, like a peat bog. Photon frowned.

“Not a strong reaction… oh I  _ knew _ red hi-gloss was better, orange never  _ was _ quite my color, oh well, we’ll make due- Where was I?”

“Bees?” Guessed Spencer, enjoying herself. She climbed up onto the countertop behind her and curled her skinny legs up into the folds of her oversized canvas coat.

“Bees? Why would I have been- Oh  _ yes _ ! Bees! My point is that any science, especially when you don’t understand it, is a process of guessing, experimenting, and observing.”

“And when you find something that works, or even  _ might  _ work, no matter how irrational, you run with it,” chimed in Ariel, coming over and leaning against the counter next to Spencer. 

“Run as though you  _ stole  _ it, as they say,” laughed Photon, stripping off a glove and touching one crisply painted bright red fingernail to the surface of the oil and glitter. The glitter clouded over, orange tarnishing to black as it scattered, making mounds against the edges of the silver bowl, sliding and squirming over one another like tadpoles. Spencer heard Ariel make another uncomfortable noise as Photon pulled back her finger, the nail now a scalded pink, completely stripped of polish. Photon tittered about the reaction with a smile, and wiped her hand on a tea towel.

“We still don’t fully understand the behaviors of magic,” she continued, putting on a clean glove. “Why it reacts the way it does. In terms of the etheric sciences, we’re still in an age before, for instance, Newton’s laws. But humanity has struggled with magic for our entire existence, and we do have more than a few… working theories. One of those is called Hill’s Maxim in the modern vernacular.”

“Whatever the mind can believe and conceive, it can achieve.” Supplied Ariel.

“Precisely. Obviously Hill wasn’t talking about magic. We know this for a fact. But, well, close enough, I think.” Photon shrugged, putting the tea towel in the sink and taking a length of green and purple crystal the size of her pinky from a drawer. She stirred the oil in the bowl, clockwise first, then counterclockwise. The oil began to bubble. The glitter continued to try and escape. The room began to smell like pecans. 

“Much of what we know about magic is that it reacts to ritual, that is, to specific ingredients and actions in conjunction. But, Hill’s Maxim implies that the power of these things may have something to do with the strength of the practitioner, and their biases and beliefs,  _ not  _ the ritual itself. Hold on a moment, though, Spencer, this part is sensitive.”

The crystal came out of the oil with a brisk shake, dripping and somehow appearing bent in the light, each facet seeming to angle in a different direction. Photon turned it over in her hands three times, her black eyebrows knitted together.

“Kitten, if you’d like?” She said, not looking up from the crystal as she stepped to the side. Ariel grunted, his expression sour.

“Like is a strong word,” he grumbled, stripping off his jacket and folding it on the counter. He rolled up his sleeves and tucked his tie under his top button, sighing deeply as he crossed to the table. Photon moved beside him, still examining the crystal as Ariel turned the bowl by inches and degrees. Spencer, not wanting Ariel’s broad back to block her view, slipped off the counter and moved over by the sink. Photon, having picked a facet and locked her eye on it, was saying:

“You always do it so well, though, dear heart… alright, ready?” Ariel said he was, and lifted the bowl. “On my mark. Three… two… one!”

Ariel, in one motion of his thick fingers, flipped the bowl, oil, glitter, needle and all, over, and slammed it against the granite slab with a clang like a gong. In the next second he’d darted back, shaking his hand with a sharp, through-the-teeth hiss of pain. When he stopped flailing, Spencer could see a tiny, perfectly circular mark on the tip of his left ring finger.

“Damn thing  _ skinned  _ me again!” 

“Poor thing,” cooed Photon absently. She was already at the station again, lifting the bowl - the oil was completely gone, Spencer noticed - and putting it aside. “Rinse that off, there are clean towels and bandages in the drawer, and a box of those ginger things you like underneath them.”

While Ariel, still shaking his hand and cursing quietly, took care of his finger, Photon sifted through drifts and piles of black and gold striped glitter with her length of crystal, pushing and flicking stray pieces into something like a tiny map laid over the pink and silver granite. She hummed while she did it, apparently dead to the world until she said:

“Perfect striations, Ariel, and the distribution is ideal, like always. You’re so  _ good  _ at that part. ...Now, where was I… ah yes, right, the Maxim.”

“As I said, the Maxim implies a level of control over magic based on pure belief. But it’s not a proven fact. A practitioner can’t just  _ hope  _ an effect into happening. Magic, as far as we’ve proven, requires  _ something _ to work. We just don’t know exactly what it is. So while the specific rituals and ingredients may seem esoteric or irrational, for now, we refer to Lance’s Law, which states ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. And do keep in mind these concepts are as old as time, the names just get changed around as time goes on. Language keeps evolving, you know.”

Ariel leaned heavily on the counter next to the sink, crunching grumpily on a thin ginger cookie, a bright green plastic bandaid on the end of his wounded finger. Spencer grinned toothily up at him, understanding.

“So, when you say ‘Maxim and Law’ what you’re saying is ‘fuck it’?”

“More like ‘I don’t know why this works, but I’d better do it anyway’,” said Ariel, smiling around a mouthful of cookie.

“As I said, the etheric sciences can be  _ very  _ imprecise,” said Photon, breezing over and dropping the crystal in the sink. Ariel gave her his hand, and with all the strength and power of a witch of her caliber, Photon made a fuss, kissing the bandage and cooing ‘oh, poor dear!’ until he blushed.


	2. P.A. Anderson Presents

The Rainbow Hilltop Cemetery was not the largest or best cared for home for the less-than-alive in the city. It was not the most used, or the most desired place to put the bones of the dead. It did, however, have a ten by ten by nineteen black marble obelisk that appeared overnight in 1983, and sometimes that was enough to get you by, at least when you were a cemetery.

At the center of The Rainbow Hilltop Cemetery was an indoor, public mausoleum, a big concrete and stained glass monster built sometime in the 1960's in what was then the chicest and blockiest of styles. It was a brick, a cube of cement from which all the sidewalks and walking paths emanated from like a rhomboid sun. It was also mostly empty, being that even at the time of its construction The Rainbow Hilltop Cemetery was not the most popular in the area. The interior of the mausoleum was only accessible through an ornately carved wooden door on one face of the cube. When it had been carved, the artist had said it was meant to represent the Archangel Gabriel calling all good souls up into a great beam of Heavenly light. To the untrained, unartistic eye, it bore greater resemblance to the artist dressed only in a thin sheet, welcoming several nubile young ladies into his arms and to the presence of his tremendous, barely hidden manhood. To the trained, artistic eye, it looked exactly like the same image he had had expertly airbrushed across his living room wall the summer prior to the door's completion. However, the artist never heard any of these critiques, as he emptied his bank account and disappeared soon after the door was paid for, and the door itself appeared in the buyer’s possession shortly after.

It was a strong door, a good door. It was the kind of door you built to keep terrible things out, to protect something that was in. It made people feel safe. It made the families of the dead feel safe, it made the groundskeepers feel safe. It even made the teenagers who broke the lock last summer and now used the mausoleum for sex feel safe. 

On this night, this particular night, from the corner vantage point of the resting place of P.A. Anderson, (1910-1966, Husband), the door seemed less safe than usual. It burst open, and two men, one big and one small, ran inside, bringing fresh air and a string of noise behind them.

“Oh shit get inside, get inside, they're... I dunno but shit! Get inside!” screamed one of them, his voice shrill. He was small for a man, his head half-shaved and what hair remained bleached bright yellow. He was wearing a lot of eye makeup, and had a long, sharp nose. He was called Spencer, though that was not his first name. 

The other one, who was called Ariel Park, just said 'Oh my god' over and over in a dull monotone. He was tall for anyone, with dark hair and a fixed, resigned sort of look. The door shut behind them. Ariel leaned against it and slid down, his suit jacket crumpling behind his back as he hit the floor with a thud.

The little one glanced around, then ran to one of the stained glass windows set into the wall. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered out into the night.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” He asked. P.A. Anderson would have assumed he was a he, at least. But then P.A. Anderson had been a little set in his ways, and anything with hair like that was probably a man. P.A. Anderson was wrong, in this case.

“It seemed like a good idea!” Yelled the big one. He rubbed his temples. “Just tell me what they're doing.”

Spencer was quiet for a long moment. She looked at Ariel, then back out the window. She bit her lip. She looked up at Ariel again. Her brow furrowed.

“Have you ever seen...  _ Night of the Lepus _ ?” She asked slowly.

There was a brief and uncomfortable pause.

“No.” Said Ariel definitely, looking over his hands at Spencer.

“They're rabbits.”

“ _ What _ ?” Ariel jumped up and went to the window. Spencer got out of his way, letting the big man take up the entire corner. “Oh, well that's just  _ great _ .”

Ariel stood back and brushed his hair across the top of his head. He clucked his tongue. He looked at the window, then at Spencer, who was staring at him.

“Out?” Spencer asked.

“Out.” Ariel said.

They both ran out the door, out of sight of the little corner spot. Their footsteps receded into the distance, soft wet grass muffling their exit. Then, there was a lot of shouting, and a sound almost exactly like a large besuited man putting his foot in exactly the wrong spot. A second later they both ran back  _ in _ the door, once again screaming hysterically. A red cloud followed them in, brightly colored smoke trailing from their limbs. Spencer slammed the door behind them and backed against the wall, shouting at Ariel. She was flailing her left arm around as though it were on fire, and indeed there was a bright red plume of smoke trailing from her suit jacket. She furiously shook his arm, as though she were trying to shake the flame off, and like a wet rag something red sloughed off and hit the floor in a cloud of crimson smoke with a soft, silken sound. The little wisp fluttered, and in the flutter a head shook, ears taking shape as its mass floated back together into a tiny, adorable red rabbit, and then Ariel's scuffed loafer stamped it out. The smoke dissipated, little red scraps and cloud-soft bits spiraling off into the stale mausoleum air. The two of them gasped and panted at each other.

“Okay, see, that didn't work.” Said Ariel.

“Did you bring Hrunting?” Asked Spencer. P.A. Anderson would not have known what that word meant, but there wasn't any shame in that. Not everyone had read Beowulf. The man who had carved the door probably hadn't read Beowulf either, and look what he had accomplished!

Ariel executed a textbook scoff. Apparently he  _ had _ read Beowulf.

“No, Spencer, I did not bring Hrunting.”

“Why do you even  _ have _ a sword if you leave it home all the time?”

“Because I don't want to be arrested!”

Ariel paced the length of the mausoleum, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips. Spencer bent by the window again, peering out into the night. What little light was filtering in was taking on a distinctly red color, though it was hard to tell through the colored glass.

“Alright, so it's, it's sympathetic, obviously. I mean, rabbits, that's pretty unique, so it was just reacting to the, the...” Ariel trailed off with a wretched look, moaned and slumped down beside the door. He leaned his head on the smooth polished wood and quietly wailed:

“I have a headache.”

Spencer looked at him, a long suffering look that rested uncomfortably somewhere between annoyance and exasperation. It was a look that said 'Really?'

There was a sound outside. Spencer ducked back down to look through the window, bobbing and weaving his head from one lead-lined square of colored glass to another. 

“What was that?” 

Ariel sat up and listened. From where P.A. Anderson was resting, he looked suddenly horrified, as though something worse than whatever had lead him down here had only just occurred to him.

“Oh no.” He said dully, confirming what his face had already said.

Outside there was another sound, like a low thud. Like a polite explosion.

“Oh no,” he said again. “They're  _ rabbits _ .”

“So? What is that? ...I think I see someone out there. With, I dunno... something with gears on it.”

“Shit.” Ariel got to his feet, a panicked look replacing his horror. “We've got a couple seconds at best, just follow what I do, do you under-”

The door burst open again, missing Ariel by inches. A bright light, like a spotlight, flowed in after the sound like an old friend. Both of them winced. From the corner spot, all that was visible through the door was the smoke still curling around the mausoleum like a fur coat. Only now, it was white instead of red. From outside the mausoleum came a voice, harsh and old and croaking. It was a voice like an old door that hadn't been maintained.

“D'you two have any idea how lucky you are?” Said the voice. There was another sound, another kind hearted explosion. This one was further away. The air smelled faintly of ammonia.

“Who are you? What's going on?” Said Ariel. 

“Hands up, citizen.”

“Wait.” Said Spencer, her brow furrowing. “I know you...”

“ _ Hands in the air, citizen. _ ” Said the voice, this time more forcefully. Both men put their hands up. Spencer glanced at Ariel.

“What's going on?” Repeated Ariel. “What did you do?”

“You don't know us. We were  _ never here _ ,” said another voice, this one only marginally more nasal than the first.

“Wait!” Cried Ariel, stepping back a pace. “No, don't!”

There was a flash, impossibly bright. It filled the mausoleum, casting strange, square shadows across the walls. Ariel jerked, his legs seemed to give out under him. He fell limply to the floor with a quiet gasp, landing hard on his side with his arm under his head. Spencer fell half a second later, an uncontrolled, painful looking fall straight onto her back with her arms splayed out.

The spotlight went out. The smoke slowly faded. After awhile, somewhere far away and out of sight, an engine backfired and what sounded like an old car drove away. The Rainbow Hilltop Cemetery was quiet and still. And then, in the darkness and the quiet:

“I landed on my keys.” Muttered Ariel into his arm. He got to his feet, followed by Spencer. She stared out the door into the cemetery, a look of disgusted disbelief on her sharp face.

“Was that - ”

“Yep.”

“The  _ Declans _ ?”

“Terry and Mae, yeah. With an old camera flash.”

“With gears stuck to it.”

“Yeah.”

“I see them at the grocery store, what the fuck was that about?”

“They protect the town,” said Ariel, brushing dust off of his sleeves. “From  _ rabbits _ .”

“Why?”

Ariel shrugged.

“Well, you know, their son stopped calling when he went to college and, well... they're lonely. I like to let them have their fun. They 'wipe my memory' every couple weeks. Seems to put a spring in their step.”

“Either way, saved our asses.”

Ariel agreed as he walked back out into the cemetery, saying something about how he'd learned to fall just so, to reduce the damage to himself. Spencer sort of snorted like she knew something Ariel didn't, and then, just before she shut the door she looked right over at the corner spot. She looked right over where P.A. Anderson might have been sitting if he were not, in fact, completely and most assuredly deceased. And then the door closed, and that was the end of that.


	3. Rum and Skim

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for vomiting.

“And I just, you know, I can’t with that guy, you know?” Ariel closed the fridge door and looked up to see if Photon would confirm if she did know. She was looking at him from across her neat little kitchen, her black brows knitted and her red lips pursed. Ariel looked at the carton of Chinese he had retrieved. He sniffed it. It smelled like peppers, which is what he had been expecting. He looked back up at Photon.

“You’re… sparkling, dear heart,” she said.

Ariel frowned, first at Photon and at the Chinese carton. Then he started to feel warm, a fuzzy little lump of anxiety rising in his throat. Was she…?

“What?” He ventured, half laughing. Photon was already across the room, a bottle of rum coming down from a cabinet Ariel had never seen rum come out of. Photon did not answer, brushing past him and the cold Chinese and reaching into the fridge for a gallon of skim milk she had bought for a recipe and promptly forgotten about. She forced both into his hands.

“Drink.”

“What.”

“You’re sparkling. Glittering. Aura is positively jumping, it’s bad, very bad, think you picked up a bug out there,” she burbled, taking the milk back and running back to a different cabinet to find a steel cocktail shaker with someone else’s wedding date etched into it. 

Ariel blinked stupidly and sank down into one of the little white wrought iron chairs at her kitchen table. The fuzzy warm feeling had died in his esophagus. He let out a long sigh and stuck the fork into the cold noodles.

“I went by that fucking  _ tree  _ today,” he said.

“Knew it was up to no good,” Photon muttered, grabbing the rum from him. Ariel ate a slice of bell pepper, glaring bitterly into the congealed brown sauce. He sent his awareness around his body and realized he was starting to feel funny, down in the bottoms of his feet. Like the floor was vibrating. He never would have noticed if she hadn’t told him something was wrong. But of course Photon had seen it coming before he had. She  _ always  _ knew things before he did. 

Ariel looked up when the shaker came back into his field of vision, the top off, full to the brim with the rum and skim milk mixture. It smelled like something else had gone in, or else the milk had long gone off. He sighed, loosened his tie, took a deep breath through his nose, and chugged like a frat brother.

* * *

The shaker hit the floor with a metallic  _ ping _ . Ariel’s body shook, groaned, and went abruptly limp in the little chair. Photon thought his eyes had rolled back, but it was impossible to see through his closed and heavy eyelids. Sitting across the little table, she collected her cards and changed to a game of solitaire, which she won handily. She started another, noticing with some embarrassment that she had drawn first the ace of spades. The bulb in the ceiling light fixture went  _ pop _ . 

Photon looked up at Ariel’s inert, wheezing body. She stood up.

_ At last. _

The voice was impressive, more vibrating her hair than her eardrums. Photon took off her glasses and laid them on the counter. She began to count.

_ I have come to your world in search of- hey. _

Photon did not look back at his body.

_ Hey, what’s… why do I feel so… _

She heard the body’s breathing hitch, sigh, and hitch again.

_ Oh. Oh no, oh no oh no oh he’s gonna- _

She did not look back… but only because she thought he deserved a little dignity. She was very fond of him, after all, and he was so  _ sensitive  _ about these little situations.

Behind her, Ariel’s body violently vomited most of a bottle of rum, a half-gallon of spoiled milk, and a single slice of bell pepper.

The spirit departed just as quickly, mortified.


	4. Solutions, LTD.

It ended with a wasteland. The tongue of faded asphalt abruptly dropped into the dry brown dirt as though pushed in and under by some gigantic hand. There were no trees, just the distant mountains across a wide, brown nothing in front of them, and behind them the same forest of metal poles and windmills they had driven through to get there. There was still no cell phone reception, which meant no maps, which meant they were still lost. There was a lot of swearing, and then they turned the little rental car around. It took them most of an hour to get back to the only sign of civilization any of them could remember along this road, an old red shipping container with a plain wooden door stuck into one side.

Photon, who was very tall, very bony, and very tired of driving, pulled over beside the shiny metal sign marked 'Solutions, LTD'. She killed the engine, took out the key, and said:

“Well.  _ One _ of us is just going to have to go in there and ask for directions.”

Ariel, who was significantly taller, fatter, and obviously the 'one of us' Photon was referring to, crossed his arms and settled further down in the passenger seat. He drew his chin down to his collarbones in an expression of singular disdain. 

“No,” he said.

It should have been simple. It should have been fun. It should have been a lot of things. Let's go on a roadtrip, someone had said, and the other two had enthusiastically agreed. They had rented a very specific car, one with no strong memories attached to it so as not to trigger the third passenger, Spencer's, empathic powers. They had planned a very specific route to keep from spending any time anywhere they didn't want to be. There had been snacks, and breaks to walk, and the promise of a good time for all. And then they had gotten lost on the second day and wound up in the middle of a huge wind farm, the tall white windmills interspersed with tall white poles topped with speakers. They had driven for miles only to find more windmills, more loudspeakers, more miles of empty road and no reception. They had not thought to bring a paper map. They had assumed they would not need it.

In the back seat Spencer (short, thin, commonly angry) muttered:

“Oh for fuck's sake,  _ I'll _ go ask for directions,” and struggled against the pile of snacks she had been packed in next to.

“No,” said Photon definitely, staring ahead. Her voice softened. “Ariel, please, just go in and-”

“No, alright? No. Because if I do something is going to try to kill me.”

“Ariel you  _ always _ think-”

“Because something always does!” He pointed fiercely at the shipping container. “It is a  _ shipping container _ . In the middle of  _ nowhere _ . Tell me this isn't going to turn into some kind of... of  _ thing _ !”

“You don't  _ know _ it's going to turn into a thing.”

“ _ You _ don't know it's not! And even if it wasn't-” He cut himself off and took a breath. “Even if it wasn't, last time I checked we were in a Dakota of all places. A  _ Dakota _ , Photon. None of us is  _ normal _ enough to talk to anyone here without getting fucked up.”

Photon stared at him, her jaw tense, her pink lip trembling. She squeezed the wheel cover with both hands, strangling the rubber until her knuckles were white. Her earrings jingled as her whole body shook with the effort of not saying whatever was on the verge of exploding out of her, tired and on edge and sick of driving as she was.

“ _ Fffine _ ,” she said, choking on her words. “Then  _ I'm _ going in.”

Ariel immediately unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car. Photon was out half a second later, catching up and sashaying towards the container ahead of him.

“I'll just be here!” Yelled Spencer after them. She flopped back and lolled her head on the headrest behind her, gazing up at the forest of speakers and windmills all around the rental car. 

“Idiots,” she muttered. The windmills said nothing.

* * *

Ariel held the plain wooden door for Photon. Inside the shipping container was a windowless office, the walls paneled with laminated plastic masquerading as pale wood. Defying all logic there was a gently turning ceiling fan, and a television mounted in the corner of the room showing a game of golf. There was another door, identical to the first, on the other side of the container. Just left of center, beside the second door, was a desk, also made of laminated plastic. Behind the desk was a healthy looking blond teenage boy in a green tee-shirt so new there were still creases from where the fabric had been folded. The shirt said 'Solutions, LTD'. He smiled blankly at them.

“Hello,” said Photon brightly, mustering all her typically minuscule attention span into accomplishing her task. “I'm terribly sorry to bother you in the middle of the workday, but you see my friends and I are just so terribly lost, and we'd like some advice on how to get back to the highway, please?”

The boy looked at them, nodded, and smiled a little harder. Ariel stood very close to Photon with his hands in his pockets and tried to look imposing. He wasn't used to doing it. Standing up this straight made his back hurt, and he had no idea what his face was doing. The boy didn't say anything.

“Excuse me?” Said Photon, her attention already flagging as her gaze fluttered around the room like a butterfly. “Could you... could you please point us towards... oh look, golf...”

“Photon.”

“Oh yes. The highway! Could you please point us towards the highway?”

The boy smiled, a slightly worried look crossing his handsome features as though he expected they would be gone by now. The ceiling fan spun. The television suddenly popped with static.

“Um... young man, the highway...”

“Son, you in there?”

The boy's brow furrowed, his blank gray eyes shimmered. The television flickered once, the crowd cheered as a ball fell into a hole on some distant patch of manicured grass, and then the signal was abruptly lost. The sound of static, impossibly loud, filled the container. Ariel and Photon shared a look.

“Maybe we'll just... find it ourselves...” said Photon with a little laugh. She backed up a step and knocked into Ariel. He put his hand on her shoulder and slowly pulled her towards the door.

The boy's eyes fluttered and rolled back into his skull, his eyebrows flinched uncertainly. He tipped his head back and opened his mouth. He roared with static.

Ariel and Photon screamed and bolted out the door, slamming it behind them.

“Oh dear!” Shouted Photon. “This  _ has _ become a thing!”

Ariel screamed “ _ I told you so! _ ” at the top of his lungs, and didn't stop as they ran across the brown, dusty ground to the car. Spencer was slung over the driver's seat, her legs dangling down like icicles. She was fervently laying on the horn with both hands, and shouting at the two of them. Through their panic they heard it, rolling outwards like a sonic boom, or a great ripple in a dark sea. The loudspeakers were coming on, one by one, in ever widening circles. Every one of them was hissing static.

Ariel lurched open the passenger door, only to have Photon elbow her way past him into the car in a cloud of limbs and clattering jewelery. Ariel choked, shut her door politely, and ran around the front of the car in the awkward half-dance of the panicked. As he fell into the driver's side he took a break from 'I told you so'ing to say:

“I guess I'm driving?”

“Oh! Oh you're right, _ I  _ was driving!”

“Keys, Photon, keys?!”

“No need to shout,” she said, handing him the keys. The car growled to life and stumbled its way out of the brown dirt patch in front of the container and back onto the empty road.

“Is this the right way?”

“I think it's the right way!”

“Well I don't want you dumping us back at the end of the-”

In the back seat Spencer grunted and curled a little tighter into herself. Photon and Ariel both jerked around.

“Oh god,” said Ariel.

“Spencer?”

“Oh god.”

“Spencer, dear.”

“Oh god.”

“Watch the road, lamb.”

Ariel did so. Spencer said:

“ _ Ffffuuck _ .”

“What is it?”

“S'  _ loud _ ,” she slurred, wrapping her arms around her head. Ariel and Photon shared a worried glance.

“Static,” he said. “What's static?”

“Electrical interference explains the lack of reception,” said Photon.

“But so does middle-of-nowhere-Dakota, next?”

“A spell, a  _ very _ big one. It could be transmitted by sound. The container is a focus, that boy is a battery.”

“If he's even a person.”

“You're suggesting a golem?”

“A good one, yeah. But then what's the spell? What's it do?”

“Wind generation would be practical.”

“No need to be so fucking insidious, then, so-”

“You're right, it didn't want us there, he was more like an alarm, or a speaker, or-”

Spencer's groan rose into a shout of pain.

“It's getting louder, fffuck, I can't  _ think _ !”

“What are you hearing?”Asked Photon.

“What do you think I'm hearing? It's  _ static _ !”

“It's in her head!” Said Ariel, mystified. For a second he was almost impressed. “It's in your head already! Is it in  _ your _ head?”

“Spencer's a canary in a mineshaft. I'd say 'not yet',” Photon responded. She was digging her purse out from under the seat and muttering to herself, murmuring a thousand answers, but none of them the right one.

Ariel chewed his lip. Row after row of windmills and roaring loudspeakers whipped by outside his window. He thought quickly, ran through a lifetime of hauntings and near-death experiences. He snapped his fingers.

“You were on to something before, you said it could transmit by sound.”

“If it's in your head you naturally repeat it. If you repeat it, it persists, it's like water on a prayer wheel, or-”

Ariel slapped both hands on the steering wheel.

“Oh fuck me.” He crowed. “It's not a spell, _ it's a meme _ .”

“The boy  _ was _ a speaker!” Whispered Photon. She smiled hugely. “Oh, I've heard of these, that's fascinating! Spencer, you just need to think of something else. Get a song stuck in your head.”

“Like what?” Spencer hissed from the back. She was digging her gloved fingers into the buzzed sides of her head.

“Like, oh I dunno, 'You Belong With Me'?”

“Or  _ anything _ by Outkast,” added Photon, humming the hook of 'Ms Jackson' cheerily as she rifled through her purse. She pulled out a tube of lipstick and started scribing perfect protective circles into the passenger side window in pearlescent pink wax. 

“I don't know either of those songs!”

Ariel hit the button on the radio. Static. Ariel hit the button again, but it stayed on, loud and hissing like it was angry.

“Teenage Dream?” He shouted over the sound.

“The theme from Ducktales!” Tried Photon.

“Hit Me Baby One More-”

“Ooh! Ooh!” Photon clapped her hands. “Don't Stop Believing!”

“ _ I don't know those songs either! _ ”

“You don't know Don't Stop Believing?”

“Fuck!  _ Fuck _ !” Spencer was shrieking now, her shoulders shaking. She choked out a wordless sound, a curse from the bottom of her stomach, and she sunk her teeth into the elastic hem of her glove.

“I just gotta drown it out, right?” She said over the sound of her teeth grinding. Her eyes were lighter, the color shimmering. There was a hiss of static in her voice, like she was a radio station that was a tiny bit too far away. Photon said:

“That should do it, yes. If you stop thinking it-”

Spencer pulled off her glove with her teeth, squeezing the black fabric between her jaws like a strap of leather before an amputation.

“ _ Ariel _ ,” she said. She held out her hand. He reached back for her and took it, closing her small, sweaty hand in his. Her fingernails dug hard into his palm as their skin made contact. Spencer screamed.

Ariel drove, squeezing Spencer's hand. His skin crawled. There was a lump in his throat the size of an orange. He wanted to let go, but he squeezed harder. It was horrible, breaking Spencer's no-touching taboo, but she was hanging on. Through whatever memories and feelings he was pouring through her like a current, she was hanging on. She was squeezing back. She'd screamed, but she hadn't let go. She trusted him for this, maybe only him. He held on through the forest of windmills and speakers, through miles of straight dry road. He held on until the static faded, until the radio played clear again. He held on until the wind farm disappeared behind them, and then Spencer let go.

She fell back into the seat, wheezing. There was sweat dripping down her face, a drop of blood sitting just inside her right nostril. She licked her lips. Ariel pulled over. He wiped his hand on his pants and put it in his pocket. It felt dirty, somehow. Like he'd put his hand in a nest of snakes. He didn't ask what she'd seen inside him, what memories she'd lived through. He didn't want to ask, even though it was clawing at the inside of him. Slowly, Spencer put her glove back on.

“That fucking  _ sucked _ ,” she said, starting to grin.

“Oh,” said Photon suddenly. “ _ There's _ the highway.” She pointed off in the distance at the little white sign marking the junction, barely visible in the haze of a hot afternoon.

“Oh-thank-god,” sighed Ariel. He drove. He didn't look back, and he didn't stop until they were out of whichever Dakota this was. 

Back in the container the boy smiled blankly. He listened to the golf game.


	5. Giraffe

Photon came home late that night. She noticed her answering machine was blinking. She made a cup of tea, humming tunelessly to herself. While it steeped she took out her prosthetic lens and cleaned it. She changed into her pajamas, then came back out into the kitchen and pressed the blinking blue button.

_ Please enter your code. _

She entered four digits into the keypad.

_ Three new messages. First unheard message: _

“Ah, Photon, this is... uh, Ariel... You weren't picking up your cell so- OH GOD! NO! FUCK!” Followed by a lot of crashing, and screaming. And something bleating madly. And then a click.

_ Beep. _

Photon drank her tea. She picked a tiny fleck of spinach out of her teeth.

_ Second unheard message: _

“So, ok, it's in the bathroom.” Pause. He was probably brushing his hair out of his face. He sounded like he was sweating. Definitely panting. “Hi Photon. How are you?”

There was another crash. Ariel made a strangled little noise in his throat, not unlike something small and furry being squeezed to death. In the background something was bleating, barely muffled by what was probably a very thin bathroom door. Photon could imagine foam dripping from dark lips, rolling red eyes. As the sound rose to a crescendo Ariel yelled:

“Um, you should call me! You should definitely call me!”

_ Beep _ .

_ Third unheard message: _

There was a lot more crashing now. The bleating was so, so close. Heavy breathing, and then quietly, like a sob:

“Help. Giraffe.”

_ Beep. _

_ End of messages. _

Photon went and got her coat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a one-word writing prompt. The word was 'Giraffe.'


	6. Immersion Therapy

Ariel Park, expert in all things supernatural, stared at his muddled reflection in the brushed steel double doors. He did not want to do this. In all honesty he spent most of his time in a state of Not Wanting to Do This, but this specific This was different. This was a particularly nasty flavor of Not Wanting to Do This. His mouth was dry. His tongue felt too big for his teeth. 

“I don't want to do this anymore,” he said. Photon chirped unhappily:

“Oh no, no, you can do it, Ariel.” She did a sort of worried flailing patting thing on his arm.

“No I can't.”

“Breathe in,” she said, and he obeyed, holding the shuddering breath for a second before she said: “And out.”

He exhaled and stared into his reflection, a hazy black mass that approximated his shape. He still did not want to do this. 

“Better?” She asked.

“No. I think I'm gonna go home. I suddenly remember I have some excuse to get to.” He turned to go, but she put her long spidery hands on his shoulders and steered him back around to face the elevator. He groaned unhappily, as though somehow the sound might convince her he was something small and fluffy and innocent, and she might take pity on him. Instead she dug her thumbs into his shoulders and rubbed tiny little circles into the tight muscles. He slouched forward and made an undignified little  _ gnuh _ sound. When she spoke her fluttering voice took on a different tone, a slow, gentle one he recognized as her therapist voice.

“Now, remember what we talked about. Remember all the things you've gone through. Remember how you said this wasn't going to beat you. You want to do this, and I'll be there the whole time.” 

“Will you hold my hand?”

“I'll hold your hand.”

The stubborn, scared part of himself tried to remind him that Photon wasn't his therapist, and in fact wasn't a therapist at all, but he knew she was right. He had decided to do this, made the choice all by himself. Ariel sighed, reached out, and pushed the button to call the elevator. 

“Well done!” said Photon, patting him on the back. “You've made excellent progress already, Ariel.”

In the wall he could hear the machinery whirring, the elevator rising to meet them. It sounded like a growl.

“Y'know, last time I was in one of these it fell.”

“But it wont this time. It's statistically unlikely.” She smiled hugely and patted him again. 

The machinery whirred. The elevator rose. Ariel swallowed dryly, blocked the feeling of falling out of his mind. Time dilated into a wide open eternity. He imagined a lot of things, a lot of terrible scenarios, a lot of horrible deaths to add to his already mountainous pile of imagined deaths. He ground his teeth. He reminded himself to breathe, clenched his fists in his pockets. He was going to do it this time, going to beat his fear of falling. He was going to ride this stupid elevator to the ground if he had to force himself every step of the way. And he was not going to panic in front of Photon. At least, not any more than he already had.

The elevator made a horrible noise. It went  _ ding _ . Ariel took a deep breath and held it, glaring at the black shape of his reflection. Now was the moment. He was going to do it. He was going to get on the elevator. He was going to get. On. The…

There was a loud crashing, rustling sound as the doors opened. A towering mound of ice cream cones spilled out of the elevator in an endless cascade, golden points splintering and bounding over each other like gazelle as gravity threw them into the hallway. Photon grabbed Ariel's arm to keep from being swept away by the current, 'oh dear'ing loudly. The cones poured out over Ariel's feet, his shins, his knees, until most of his legs were buried in a deep sea of sweet, waffly goodness. When they finally came to a stop there was a pool of waffle cones several feet deep around the elevator door.

They stood in silence for a second. A final cone bounced out and rolled to a halt against Ariel's thigh.

“Well,” said Photon, crunching as she got her feet back under her. “ _ That _ was unlikely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was based on a one image prompt. You can probably imagine what it was.


	7. What Spencer Saw

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for death mention.

“What did you see? When you- ah, when I touched you. You said, ah, you said-“

“That she was dea-“

“Yeah,” he said hurriedly, interrupting. “What, um, what exactly did you see?”

She frowned up at him, blinked, then turned her eyes to the grass. She laced her fingers together.

“The hospital,” she said slowly. “What you said. What you felt.”

“But not the-“

“No, I got that too. Because you remembered it. Like, that’s how it works, like I’m you.”

“Oh,” he said, his chest tight.

“I mean, just in flashes.”

“So not… not everything?”

Spencer shook her head.

“No, man, I know what happened.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry,” she said, her voice flat. Ariel could tell she wasn’t sorry, but then he knew it wasn’t her fault. He swallowed uncomfortably. They didn’t say anything for a long moment, but then Ariel said:

“I was in High School. It was Prom. I didn’t have a date, but… I had friends, right? I wasn’t, I mean… So I was driving, alone, and I saw… Her, ah, her car was just...” He swallowed and made a vague gesture with his hand.

“I know what happened,” she said again. He looked at her. She was still looking at the grass. He noticed the ants crawling on the cement walk in front of them, around where she was looking. That made more sense than the grass, he thought. He continued:

“I’ve never, um. I told everyone she was… ah… that she really had been dead when I found her. Until now. Just. Why, you know? Why tell people she died that way? With just, you know. Me. In my rental suit.”

He looked up, over the park. Someone was walking a big, fluffy dog.

“I was a kid.” It sounded incredibly empty, putting it that way. He knew he would do the same thing now, after all. “I thought it was better that way.”

“Yeah.”


	8. A Christmas Miracle

This was it. This was his life. Ariel Park sniffled and leaned his head on the steering wheel as the car came to a stop. This moment, crystalized, was his life. Nursing the beginnings of a head cold, with snow and salt on his pants, sitting in his car at this time of night on this day of the year. This was it. Distilled, pure. This was his life.

* * *

It had been eleven thirty when Photon had first called.

“...And just when I thought I had it all ready – oh, but it's simply the  _ worst _ – there was a terrible disaster,” she had said, after a set of rushed pleasantries and a long description of one of her experiments. Ariel could hear her twirling and playing with her jewelery. He imagined her sitting up in her apartment, or on the sales floor of her shop, surrounded by crystals, bells, and statues of various gods. He grunted noncommitally in favor of a real answer. He felt this was smart. He felt this was a good way to get around whatever Photon was gearing up to ask him to do. He smugly circled an entree on the Panda House One menu, and shifted the phone around to his other ear as Photon continued sweetly:

“Yes, oh, it's just  _ awful _ . I'm just fresh out of twine, and I simply cannot finish this little project without it! Dreadful, just dreadful. I've found some ribbon, and some leather straps, but it's just not working, feather dear! They burn up all wrong.”

She paused. He imagined her biting her lip on the next part:

“And I was hoping, sweet pea, that you might help me, in this my hour of greatest need.”

Ariel grunted and put his pencil down on the Panda Special Fried Rice.

“Photon, you know I'd do it, normally. But it's not that simple. I can't get you  _ anything _ . It's Christmas Eve,” he said, imagining a door slamming on his charity. The line went quiet. He heard Photon clacking her necklaces together thoughtfully. Eventually, with a halting, clipped sincerity, she said:

“Oh. Why, dear heart. I had no idea. I thought... well, I assumed you were Jewish.”

“I am!” He said quickly. “Well, I mean,  _ technically _ . It's sort of like how I'm Korean...”

“Oh! Then you don't have any plans, I imagine?”

Ariel looked at the Panda House One menu in his hand, and with a hard pang in his chest, read that they delivered until three in the morning.

“Photon, noplace is open,” he pleaded. “Not now, not tonight. It doesn't matter if I don't have plans.”

“Oh. I suppose you have a point.” Her necklaces clacked one final time. She sighed sadly. “Well, you're right. I'll just have to do without.”

She sighed again. Ariel leaned back in his chair, let his head loll back limp on his neck. He put his arm over his face. He croaked out:

“I'll see what I can do.”

* * *

And so, he had driven around for forty-seven minutes, checking his phone, and his common sense, and when that failed him, Google, for where might be open after midnight on Christmas Eve in America. He had at last found a solution. It was not a good solution, but by now he was cold, and had salt and snow streaking his pant legs, and his nose had started to run like a tap.

He looked up from the steering wheel at the blue and gold building looming in the bright lights of the parking lot. The Ikea smiled down at him. He sniffled back at it, snorting a huge wad of snot back into his sinus with a palpable, neck-jerking  _ thud _ . 

This was his life, he thought again, as he trudged through the two inches of delicately falling snow. He was sure some tiny child had wished upon a twinkling evening star for this snow, this late-coming, fluffy powder that had started to come down in drifts over the last half hour. This was his life, he thought as he found the Free Twine box on the side of the building. He pulled it, hand over hand, coiling it into a huge loop around his arm. 

This was his life, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut, as the cop crunched through the snow behind him.


	9. Blood for the Blood Sword

Ariel Park glanced over his shoulder at Photon. She was where she had been a few minutes earlier, sitting in silent contemplation at her little iron and glass kitchen table, her elbows on the table, her fingers steepled. She was still staring intently over her fingers into the snow globe.    
Ariel was almost certain Photon wasn’t actually looking into the snow globe. He was almost certain she was staring into the middle distance, and that the snow globe just had the good fortune of being locked in her gaze by chance. Inside the snow globe was a mermaid. The mermaid was holding a boot, and wearing a floppy mesh fisherman’s hat. Photon had received it as a gift from a friend. Ariel wasn’t sure why she had elected to put it on the table. He tried not to question her motives.

  
He turned away, back to the dinner dishes in the sink. He washed a plate. He washed a glass. He scrubbed impotently at a spot of dried alfredo sauce on a spoon. He jumped when he heard Photon suddenly start to speak.   
  
“Did you know,” she said, her voice soft and dreamlike, “That if I had the blood of two to four hundred average-sized adult humans, I could extract enough iron to forge a  _ sword? _ ”   
  
Ariel looked over his shoulder very, very slowly. He looked at Photon. Photon, who still had not moved, continued to stare into the snow globe.   
  
“No,” he said. “No I did not.”   
  
“And I could use the carbon from their bones to  _ strengthen  _ it.”   
  
The water ran in the sink. Soft music continued to play in the living room. A dog barked in the parking lot behind the building. Ariel Park said:   
  
“Huh,” and went back to washing the dishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a tumblr post going around back in the day about making a sword out of blood. My contribution was this little drabble.


	10. Sauna

In a sauna on an island in the boundary waters of Minnisota, two women were talking.

“...and that, I think, is how to raise a genius from birth,” said Photon.

Spencer, who was still a talented but uncontrolled empath in spite of her better efforts, stared at Photon, who was sitting next to her on the wooden bench. Spencer was sitting on a bathrobe, her skinny brown legs folded under her like a card table, carefully not touching anything but the robe with her bare skin. Her high plateau of bleached blonde natural hair were wilting in the heat and wet with sweat.

“Fuck.” She said. Photon beamed and fidgeted on the hard wooden bench, correctly taking the curse as high praise. A bead of sweat dripped off her long nose as she continued:

“I based the theory largely on László Polgár's work. Raised three chess masters, all girls. Of course, I'd be focusing more on the etherial sciences.”

“Yeah, 'course.”

“Geniuses are made, not born,” she quoted, floating her hands around like butterflies in the dry heat. “I just need to find another party to do the raising with me. Takes a village, et cetera.”

She uncrossed and recrossed her legs.

“Someone, sort of, nurturing. And, I think, kind? Supportive. Someone from our little circle of etheric dabblers, obviously.”

“Ariel?” 

Photon waved her hand around like she was swatting a particularly persistant bee.

“No, no, we've talked about that.”

“You've talked to Ariel about raising magic science babies?” Photon rushed into the next sentence, like she was running from the subject. Spencer could feel the surge of muddled emotions rolling off of her in waves, the soft but insistant pulse of feelings not her own.

“I've talked to Ariel about  _ dating _ , he wont do at all. No, I need someone... firm. To contrast my... ah,  _ personality _ .”

She fluttered her fingers. Spencer laughed.

“Someone with a little, I don't know...” Photon bit her lip. Her black prothetic eye glimmered in the dim light of the sauna. Her skin glistened slightly. “Someone with a little more  _ bite _ than I have.”

Spencer found herself looking up at Photon. She found herself staring at her. She found the feelings and ideas Photon was giving off becoming increasingly clear, like the die inside a Magic 8-Ball floating to the surface. Even sitting naked with Photon in a sauna, alone, it was those emotions that made her feel the moment was obscene.

“Are you coming on to me?”

“I haven't decided yet.”

Spencer fumbled for a second, trying to bring her standard 'let 'em down easy' speech to mind.

“Photon-”

“I have decided I'm not,” said Photon loudly.

Spencer breathed a sigh of relief in the following silence. She wiped the sleeve of the bathrobe over her face.

“How did you find this place?” Asked Photon.

“Used to come up here in the summer with my Scout troop, an', like, this Christian retreat camp thing I did a couple times. You ever in the Scouts?”

“Oh yes, for a time.” Photon 'phew'ed and patted her face with a towel.

“What was your Capstone Project? I set up a wilderness retreat slash survival thing for the old folks home my Gramma lived in. Everybody  _ loved _ it.”

“I didn't get that far, I'm afraid. Things got a little, um, awkward, what with me being...”

Photon trailed off, distracted. Spencer could feel a twisting new flow of emotions now, darker, more pointy around the edges, more like muted shouting than whispers. She leaned forward, her brow furrowed.

“It wasn't, like, that you're-”

“Oh, no. I was going to say I was... ah,  _ weird _ .”

“You're not weird. Well, no, you're weird, but good weird. My kinda weird.”

“And you're a dear.” Photon 'phew'ed again.

“Wanna get out?”

“Yes. Where do we wash off?”

“The lake.” Spencer grinned like an alligator. Photon stared back at her, unamused.

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. No water pressure.” 

“There's no  _ heat _ in the lake.”

“Yeah, it's like two extremes, super hot and then super cold. It's awesome.”

“What is that thing Ariel always says to you?”

“'You're awful, and I hate you.'”

“Yes. That.”

“I know,” said Spencer, slipping off the bench and into her sandals. She put the bathrobe over her shoulders and stepped out into the cold, cold night, laughing.


	11. I Guess He Took a Punch For Her?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for a little bit of blood.

“I s'pose you're going to tell me that was very brave,” said Ariel, snuffling. His tongue and the back of his throat tasted like raw meat, like copper, like his own blood. Which was apt, since that's where some of it was.

“Well,” lilted Photon, coming out of the kitchen. She had a plastic bag full of ice in her hand, which she was wrapping in a towel. The towel had a kitten on it, and a teacup. After a moment she finished: 

“It was very macho.”

Ariel took the towel and held it against his face. There was a dark smear of blood from his nose all the way to his neck, caught in his thick black stubble. Dried, rust-colored spots dotted his blue shirt, ruined his loosened tie. He sighed, fresh blood bubbling from his nose.

“That's what I thought,” he muttered through the towel. “Sorta thought he'd, y'know, back off.”

Snuffle.

“Cuz, ah, you know.” He waved his hand, indicating the six-foot-something-more-pounds-than-he-liked-to-count of himself in the wicker chair.

Snuffle. 

He heard Photon sigh. He felt her fluff and readjust the pillow she had put behind his head to keep him from tipping his head back. There had been a long, upsettingly cheerful lecture about swallowing your own blood before she had gone for the ice.

“Did I at least look cool?” He asked, pulling the towel away from his face to look up at her. “Before he hit me? And you maced him?”

Framed by the colored bottles decorating the beams above her, Photon smiled a gentle smile. Her eyes were soft and dark, her face crinkling beautifully in the yellow light of the lamp. She parted her perfect, rose-colored lips, and then lied through her teeth.

“Yes,” she said.


	12. Some Conversations

_ (One) _

“Ok, so, that's another thing... don't call me Spencer,” she said, shifting around in the passenger seat. She folded her legs up under herself, the folds of her coat wrapping over them until she was a little army green mountain. 

“Since they're Spencers, too,” she finished.

“Right,” said Ariel. “So, what do I-”

“Marion.”

Ariel nearly choked. He didn't know what he had expected, but it wasn't that.

“ _ Marion?! _ ” He tried not to laugh. The traitorous smile he couldn't help.

“What?” She scowled at him.

“Nothing, just, Marion?  _ Marion _ ?”

“Marion.”

“Like, as in the  _ Maid _ ?”

“No, as in Cobretti.” She shrugged. “My dad really loves his Stallone.” 

“You don't  _ look _ like a Marion. You look like, I dunno, a Ted.”

“Go to hell,” she laughed.

He lapsed into silence, watching the highway. A car passed him. Another. He changed lanes.

“Marion.” He said slowly, trying out the sound. It didn't fit in his mouth properly. “ _Mar_ ion. Maarionnn. Mmmmmmmarion. MAR-rion.”

“Stop that.”

“Hello, Marion!” He said brightly, and then, giving up: “It just, it sounds wrong! Do you have a middle name?”

“You don't want to use my middle name.”

“Why?”

“It's 'Bravery'.”

Ariel cracked up laughing. Spencer dug into the storage compartment in the door, pulled out a wadded up receipt, and threw it at his head. It skittered off under the seat somewhere.

“Fuck you!” She yelled as he composed himself. “Everyone has a stupid middle name!”

“I don't,” he said with a snort. “Mine's 'Dominic'.”

“What?” She yelped, turning her head down and looking up at him. “Why the fuck do you go by Ariel?”

It was his turn to glare.

“What's wrong with Ariel?”

* * *

_ (Two) _

“Spencer can you pass the-”

He stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“No, wait, you're all Spencers.”

* * *

_ (Three) _

The dishes splashed in the sink. She was gearing up towards something, he could tell. It was a mother thing. A quiet aura of 'now I'm not asking but I'm asking', like she was trying to sneak up on him before she asked whatever question she was thinking about asking.

“So... you're that Mister Park that Marion's told us about?”

“Ah, yes.” He smiled down at her. She handed him a dish. He dried it.

“That's nice. She, uh, she talks about you. Sometimes.”

Ariel wasn't sure he liked where this was going. Had Spencer said something about him that he wasn't going to like?

“Oh?” He said, trying to remain calm. 

“Yes.” She said slowly. She went quiet. The dishes clinked around. He dried another one. After a second she started again:

“And you've known her for, oh...”

“Years?” He filled in helpfully. He didn't remember the exact number. It had been, what, summer? But which one?

“Yes...” she trailed off again. 

Clink. Splash.

Ariel found himself looking over her head at the kitchen door. Somewhere, Spencer was helping her father with his computer or something. It felt like she had gone to the other end of the universe. He desperately wished she would come back and save him from whatever the hell was happening.

“And I know, you know, that her hair's a little... funny. And she's, well... Well, she's got that problem with being touched but... but...”

“Yes?” He felt himself physically leaning away from the conversation like it was a bomb about to go off.

“But, well, you're a man and all, and it might be, ah, natural if you two were...”

Oh god.

“And God knows I'm not getting any younger, and...”

Oh my god.

“Well neither's she, you know, and-”

Suddenly Mister Spencer's voice rang out:

“ _ Jesus Mary, it's not gonna happen! _ ”

_ “A mother can dream! _ ” She shouted back.


	13. A Specter, Another Specter, A Pool, and Some Salt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for needles/blood drawing.

Ariel Park came through the door like a freight train, still clutching the canister of salt like a weapon. Which it was, but that was beside the point. Before the little entry bell was done jingling he was shouting:

“Are you alright? I came as soon as I got your call, I...” He stopped. Photon was standing, whole and well, in the middle of the room next to a blue plastic wading pool. It was the kind with the slide, and a rainbow of fish painted on the outside. She was daintily holding a big yellow wheeled mop bucket and an expression of pleasant surprise. The wind chimes and strings of beads scattered throughout the shop chimed happily, as though to mock his urgency. He closed the door behind him and bolted it.

“This is not an emergency.” He said, remembering how he had nearly died falling down the stairs of his apartment complex, and how his right foot had not stopped hurting since. He had not even put on socks, or a tie.

“I never said it was,” she said, making a floaty little gesture with one long hand. She had the precise, curling fingers of a harpist, and all the focus of a cloud of gnats. “I just said...”

She trailed off, seeming to forget him while she picked her way across the complicated pattern drawn in colored chalk on the floor. She bent and stretched under a few lengths of the colored yarn she had pinned to her walls and made her way into the supply closet. Ariel cleared his throat. He heard the sound of water thumping around in old pipes, and a bucket filling.

“You said for me to come quickly. With salt.”

“And you did!” Her voice came softly from deep inside the closet. “Ah, how the spheres do align...”

“You know in our line of work, calling someone up at this time of night and saying 'bring salt' is like saying 'be a dear and bring me that cannon on the wall'.”

“And you are  _ such _ a dear.” She sang. With a house-shaking groan the water stopped.

Ariel huffed. He shifted on his feet and realized in his hurry to get down here, he had put on two left shoes. They were not even the same color. He found a trunk nearish to the action and sat down to take them off.

“I offer peace.” She said as she carried the bucket out of the closet. “In the form of tea. On the table behind you, in fact. And also those orange cookie things you like.”

He helped himself to both a handful of cookies and a tiny, chipped china cup of tea, and felt a little better. Which made him suspicious of both the tea and the cookies. He put the cup back on the table and watched her fill the little pool. He waited for her to explain what she was doing. She did not explain what she was doing. Finally he asked:

“What are you doing?”

“Oh!” She cried, apparently not aware that she had called him to watch her filling a kiddie pool with water in the middle of the night with no explanation.

“I have been thinking about  _ salt _ .” On the last word she dropped the mop bucket off to one side. It banged against the floor and rolled noisily off into the depths of the shop. “For you see, salt is anathema to the forces of the other side.”

“Most of them,” he said, only resenting a tiny bit that she thought she needed to explain that to him. Somewhere out of sight the bucket clonked into a glass case of crystals. Photon skirted the pool and wheeled some kind of elaborate contraption out of her back room while she went on.

“Most of them, yes, right. But the point is we, the living, are still susceptible to them. Possessions, influences, ghostly interactions, coitus with the dead if you believe some people. But our mass is, in fact, some percentage salt!”

Ariel nodded. The thing she had wheeled out looked like an old CB radio stuck onto a rolling TV cart. There were a lot of cords and wires, and a long metal scoop. Two upturned mason jars were in there somewhere, one marked IN and one marked OUT in Photon's spidery script. Photon went about hooking the machine up to several displays she had around the shop. She buried a rod in a bay of crystals here, stuck a wire to a statue of some ancient god there. She put a tiny jeweled wheel in the smoothie machine, and what looked like a tire gauge on a length of twine in one of the bins of minor charms and baubles.

“Point One Five per cent of our mass, in fact. On average. I didn't have time to test that. So, I thought, at what point do we, or anything else, become  _ too _ salty for our otherworldly counterparts? And from there I thought, well, if I had a sort of low grade specter, and a spare for a control, and a pool of water, and my extractor, and quite a lot of salt, and something to measure very very precisely, well, then I'd  _ know _ .”

She finished her preparations, straightened up with a flourish and stared at him expectantly.

“You couldn't sleep until I came down here.” He said, fighting a losing battle with a smile.

“Well of course not. There was  _ science _ to be done!”

“Oh, agreed. And I'm here because...” He already knew why he was here. He'd known since he saw the empty jars on her machine. But he leaned back on the trunk, crossed his ankles and smiled at her anyway, like somehow if he just wished it, she would act like she was the least bit ashamed of herself.

“I didn't have nearly enough salt,” she said, taking the canister he had brought and setting it next to the pool. She wandered off to another room adjacent to the main shopping floor and came back with a black leather case and a bottle of iodine.

“And I needed to set up.” she continued. “It was more efficient if you brought me some.”

“And.” He returned to his tea and tried to look vaguely menacing or something. He did not. 

“Oh, and you know, I  _ know _ that there are a lot more things to consider. Type of salt, percentage of ionized salt in the salt sample, minerals added to salt, purity of water, type of specter, but I thought I should, you know, start here. Table salt and tap water. And move from there. I haven't even shown you my notes on colloidal silver yet.” She smiled her shaky, unfocused smile.

He waited. She sat down next to him and put her case on her bony knees.

“Ariel.” She said, looking up at him with her big eyes. The uncanniness of her coal black prosthetic lens notwithstanding, it was a very convincingly sweet stare.

“Photon.” He said.

“I do not have a specter. Or another specter to use as control.”

“I had noticed.”

“So, to catch a few, I was hoping for just a teeny, tiny, itsy bitsy, you won’t even notice it's gone... donation?” She squinted hopefully and drummed her fingernails on the black case in her lap. He finished his tea and sighed.

“Well, I can't disagree with science,” he said eventually. Photon cheered and opened the case. She had already had her thumbs under the snaps.

“Oh, you are a prince!” She said. He rolled up his sleeves and let her daub iodine on the inside of his right elbow, where the veins were closest to the surface. She tied a length of tubing around his arm and gave him a squishy foam lemon to squeeze. They had been behind where he was sitting the whole time, like she knew exactly where he would be when she asked. Which she probably had. Photon knew things.

“One of these days I'll figure out exactly what it is about you the otherworldly find so irresistible, and then we won’t have to do this.”

“Vampire,” he said softly as she prepared the needle.

“Don't be silly Ariel. There's no such thing as vampires. I disproved them empirically. Now squeeze your lemon.”

She slipped the needle in. It was going to be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this might be the first thing I ever wrote with Photon in it? She's become by far my favorite of the three to write, she's a lot of fun.


	14. Defenestration

The museum was closed. Downstairs people were gathered for an opening. This was not important just then. 

A door opened. Two women ran into the small room, each a flurry of layers of cloth. One, the tall pale one, was missing one of her beaded slippers. The other, the short dark one, had her arms inside her coat, crossed tight on her chest. They slammed the door behind them, leaned against it. The short one shouted:

“Do you have a sword or something?”

And the tall one said:

“Why would I have a-”

Before the little one interrupted:

“I dunno, I'm used to Ariel!  _ He _ has a sword!”

“I am not Ariel,” said the tall one, frowning. “Not  _ everyone _ you know has a sword.” Her name was Photon. The cold cement floor hurt her bare foot. She was tired, and irritated. She looked around the room, at the sheet covered things the museum stored in the second floor storage room. She had a plan.

“Spencer, dear,” she said to the other woman. Spencer was peering through the keyhole at what had chased them. Photon's voice had a tremor in it, a warble, like a birdsong. This was not unusual. A  _ thud _ shook the door, the impact jostling both women. Photon smiled a frail, wobbling smile.

“Spencer, dear,” she said again, louder, as though the thud were someone rudely interrupting her. “You are going to open the door.”

Spencer looked up at Photon with a slack expression.

“I am?”

“Yes.”

Spencer stuck out her jaw. She licked her teeth. Another  _ thud _ shook the door. There was a wet sound behind it. Slapping. Like a fish slapped against a stone. Spencer looked at the door.

“Yeah, okay,” she said lazily.

* * *

After a moment of preparation, Spencer opened the door. The thing on the other side – all slapping fins and flailing arms and shreiking mouths and and and – came through, shoving the door aside, pushing the small woman against the wall behind it. She bounced. She coughed.

It rolled across the room, like a wheel covered in fins, silly but somehow not when it was in the room with them.

It did not see the window was open.

It did not see the twenty foot drop onto the sharp, iron fence.

It  _ did  _ see Photon, briefly, rail-thin arms stiff with muscle, before she hit it smartly with a heavy antique chair.

“Some of us,” murmured Photon over the horrible wet  _ squelch _ that followed. “Have  _ chairs _ .”


	15. Psychopomp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for some vague references to death.

Whatever pain had been in the crash, whatever hot light and red world and rage of metal and glass, it was nothing to this. Nothing to the void of this moment, nothing to the feeling of total immobility, nothing to the lack of limbs, the helplessness, the prison, the electric rigidity, the screaming screaming _screaming_ _no no no nonononoNONONONO_

_ Fucking hell, there’s something in the field, turn it off, turn it off! _

Brightness, and a thousand shining moments, glass. Glass. The nothing faded. There was calm. It- because it was an it, maybe? A he or a she or a they once, but now…? It relaxed.

The room seemed to stretch out forever. Tables and shelves and surfaces blocked out a space that had no edges, no borders, just endless things on endless pedestals. Glass bottles. Crystals. Shining points of light and hardness and texture. It tried to focus. It slid.

It thought, there was a crash. It remembered a crash. It remembered legs and arms. And now it don’t seem to have any of those. It thought, with a pulse of fear, that whatever it had been, it might be  _ dead _ .

_ Hello, dear. Can you hear me? _

_ Don’t talk to it, for fuck’s sake- _

_ Hush, puppy. Hello? _

There was someone in the brightness, among the edges of crystal. And it thought, oh, of course, if I am dead, then logic followed that this must be some sort of god. And God was a tall, thin, black-haired woman with one eye and an Adam’s apple. Somehow, it wasn’t surprised. 

It tried to speak. It didn’t have a mouth. It asked who am I who am I why why why why why  _ whywhywhy _ and God jerked away, her raiments flowing, her eye watering her red mouth saying

_ Shh, shh… no, dear… _

**_Shit_ ** _ , the lights, it’s breaking the bulbs- _

It realized with a chill that there was something else there in the brightness, in the facet. A dark, foreboding tower, a lightning strike, a hurricane. It instantly hated this other thing. It wanted it gone. It wanted it to  _ die _ . This thing must be bad, though it didn’t know why. It was sure, as sure as it was that it had had legs. That it had been alive. Maybe its name had been Anna.

_ Its looking at me. They always look at me. _

_ It doesn’t have eyes, puppy. _

It didn’t? If God said so, it must be true. But it had seen, seen so much, saw the brightness and the shine and the crash the crash it hurt why did it hurt? 

God  _ shhushed _ again. She was so beautiful.

_ Yes, dearest, the crash. You need to go. _

_ It’s not- it’s just a… oh. Oh. _

Go? It had to go? Go where? What happened? The crash the crash the crash why why why

But it knew it was true. It felt the hurt fading. It felt itself pull.

It felt something like falling asleep.

God blinked. She smiled, a thin, warm smile.

_ Wherever feels best, dear. Wherever feels warmest. _

Anna. Anna? Anna or Carl or Mako or nothing or nothing or nothing

Had had legs? Hadn’t it?

Hadn’t it?

Bricks and cars and forests and feelings and love and something, something, regret-

_ It’s... fading. _

_ Yes. _

Nothing.

But a warm place. Somewhere.

It turned.

It went.

* * *

Photon sighed, soft and quiet in the darkness under the shattered lights. 

“Oh, I  _ hate _ when that happens,” she said, sinking slowly down into a chair and putting her hands on her knees. Ariel plopped limply down on a trunk nearby, laughing nervously and ruffling his hair.

“Occupational hazard. Did you- did you see how it looked at me? Wow,” he breathed. His hands were shaking. “ _ Wow _ .”

“It couldn’t have hurt you, kitten,” said Photon quietly, turning her eye to the ceiling. “It was only a lost memory, after all.”

“Even so. Gimme a few minutes before you turn the machine on again. I don’t- wow.  _ God _ . I don’t want to do that again tonight.”

“Of course, dear. Of course.”


	16. Poor Marilyn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for needles/blood drawing.

Photon slipped the needle into Ariel’s arm with a deft, practiced movement, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for her. Ariel exhaled slowly, uncurled his fingers, and leaned back in the chair. A foam lemon was deposited in his hand.

“Squeeze, dear.” Lilted Photon, brushing a few wavy black hairs across Ariel’s forehead as she walked away. Ariel smiled.

“Where do you keep all this, anyway?” He muttered, gesturing to the plastic medical bag hanging from the makeshift hook on the armrest of his chair. Photon had marked a line on the bag, the amount she intended to take from him, in silver marker.

“In the back of my refrigerator, of course.”

“With the potato chips and your, uh…” Ariel blanched, stopping short of the word ‘underwear’. He was suddenly uncertain of his right to talk about Photon’s undergarments. Which she surely had, and he was now very aware of the possibility of.

“I’m sorry?” Photon turned back towards him and raised an eyebrow.

“It’s. It’s from a movie,” he said, suddenly too self-conscious to elaborate on the rest of the quote. “The Seven Year Itch?”

“Never seen it.”

“Really? It’s a classic! It’s the one where Marilyn stands on the air vent, does the whole big skirt thing.” He did a flippy little hand gesture to illustrate. “You know the one. Everyone’s seen The Seven Year Itch, right?”

“Is this a  _ good _ movie?” Photon asked suspiciously. Ariel considered this, smiled sheepishly, and said:

“It might be more of a  _ classic _ movie.”

“Ahh, I see.”

Ariel squeezed the lemon slowly, rhythmically. His blood ran down the tube. He breathed deeply and evenly. The bag slowly filled. Ariel slowly began to feel comfortable again.

“Poor Marilyn,” sighed Photon, after a moment. She shook her head. “Did you know I once tried to contact her spirit?”

Ariel sucked air through his teeth and involuntarily crushed the lemon.

“Oh, I know dear, I know. But I was young. A séance seemed like fun at the time.” Photon focused on the middle distance. “It took us months to get the stains out…”


	17. Ariel Has Arms, This Is Confusing

His hair was a mess, tangled black waves sticking up at odd angles and hanging across his forehead. He had what looked few days of black, wiry beard growing thick across his face and neck. He was ashy, and shone with sweat. All this she had expected, had seen before a few times, usually not all together, and always under different circumstances. Even the wad of bloodied tissue rolled and stuffed up his chapped, red nostril didn't surprise her. It was very hard to surprise Photon.

But still, she was surprised. She had not expected to see... that. Ariel Park had worn a suit every day that Photon had known him. A small collection of them, shifting and changing with the season, and the current style, and the occasional ripped cuff. It was a constant, like the moon. She was rather well aquainted with his collection of ties. She had, of course, occasionally seen him roll up his sleeves, or set aside his jacket, or undo his top button, but... Well. 

She knew it was silly, really, it was just... 

She could feel her lips pursing, her brows twitching together, her eyelids fluttering. Intellectually, she had known he had them. Intellectually she assumed Ariel Park had a  _ lot _ of things she couldn't see.

But now Ariel Park was hunched in his doorframe, leaning against the door, blinking slowly with bleary eyes. He was wearing an ancient, baggy, Styx concert tee-shirt, and a pair of jeans. His arms were visible up to his biceps, the skin, untouched by the sun in years, pale and thick with black hair. She could not stop staring. It was as though she had not ever really known he  _ had  _ arms. Her eyes flickered over the rest of him, noticed with a start that she could see the lump of an undershirt outlined clearly near his collar. She unconsciously touched the string of pearls around her neck, banishing the sudden, unbidden idea that Ariel Park might have  _ shoulders _ .

Spencer was talking to him. He was talking back. Spencer was passing him the soup they had brought. Photon was arranging her face into something other than total confusion. Now she was talking, and talking quite naturally, determined that no one suspect even for a second that she was surprised. She held it together quite well, considering the shock.

* * *

A few minutes later she swung down into the driver's seat of her car and turned the key. The seatbelt whirred around, coming over her shoulder as the car rumbled to life. She stared forward, lips slightly parted, eyes hazy and blank.

“He probably has calves, too,” she murmured, interrupting Spencer.

The engine hummed. The car pulled away from the curb. Spencer said:

“...What the  _ fuck _ ?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one might be a me thing? But I used to know a woman who wore a lot of layers, but every year when it got warm out, she would wear a tank top, and every year I would be earnestly surprised that she had shoulders.


	18. Blood Meringue

“Ariel! I have made a meringue!”

“Oh, that's-”

“ _ Out of blood! _ ” She swung the bowl towards him. The pink rubber whisk spun inside, rolling around in a thick, bubbly, bright red mixture. It was so glossy it sparkled, and it was clearly forming the perfect stiff peaks of a proper meringue. Ariel gagged and fell back a few steps, back out into the hall beyond Photon's floral explosion of a kitchen.

“Out of, out of  _ my _ blood?” He gasped, clutching at his tie.

“Oh  _ heavens _ no, lamby!” She swung the bowl back away from him, as though coyly protecting it; as though she was worried he was going to steal a taste. He gagged again. She was still smiling her vague, unfocused smile, as though she saw nothing wrong or bizarre about any of this. Which, of course, she didn't. She continued:

“I don't have nearly enough of your blood to make a batch of meringues, dear, not  _ nearly _ enough. This is piscine, I assure you. Kosher, actually. And of course you know blood has similar proteins to eggs. Similar levels of albumin.”

With a little twirl she turned back to the counter. Ariel watched silently as she tapped off the whisk, lifted an enameled spoon printed with orange roses, and started dishing the meringue onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet. The cuckoo clock on the wall ticked softly as the spoon clinked against the bowl. Ariel cleared his throat. Photon continued dishing, humming along to some song only she could hear. Eventually, Ariel prompted:

“And I suppose there's a prac-”

“And there is a practical application!” Photon crowed, grinning hugely. Her lipstick matched the meringues in shade and gloss, he noticed, and shuddered. He would never look at red lipstick the same way again. 

“They're an absolute dream for blood magic,” she said.

“Oh god,” Ariel said flatly.

“Magic doesn't care in what state the blood is, of course, so long as it's still blood. The virgin thing is largely a myth. We all know that. So, as long as the basic chemical structure is in place, a meringue of blood and sugar shouldn't change the reaction necessary to achieve magic. And they keep ever so much longer than raw blood, you see, and so, in a pinch, one can crush them up, or throw them, or consume them, or whatever one might need a bit of blood for.”

Ariel stared at her, mouth open, face screwed up in a mixture of disgust and earnest admiration.

“I'm going to test the theory once they're done,” she finished. She put the tray in the oven and switched the heat off. “All we have to do now is wait, oh, twelve hours? I decided the less heat the better. So as to cause the least amount of change to the chemical structure.”

She smiled her wobbly smile. The cuckoo clock shouted the hour.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was definitely inspired by another tumblr post. Did you know you can use blood as a substitute for eggs? Can you imagine how that would taste?


End file.
